Friday, 16 April 2021
Allan saw a swallow, or swallows, shopping for a home among our birdhouses this morning.
I had woken up at seven forty five realizing I simply must try to get an urgent care appointment (tricky, because we don’t have an urgent care facility and the clinic can be busy). I have had enough ear infections in my adult life that I know when one is brewing. Fortunately, I was able to see a physicians assistant and had caught the problem before needing antibiotics (would be very bad to take them for a third time in six weeks). Just a powerful prescription decongestant should be enough.
The strange part of the morning is that when I was asked in the clinic entry foyer by the intake staff member if I had any Covid symptoms, she then said “Let me get you a mask.” I had completely forgotten. She said, “Don’t feel bad, I went into the grocery store without one by accident and it took me twenty minutes to figure out why everyone was giving me the stink eye.” Still. I shocked myself. I think I must have pandemic fatigue.
Earlier this week, I had read in Allan’s AARP magazine that older people who go to the emergency room tend to end up back in the hospital within a month and a rather shocking number of them die. I won’t go read the worrisome article again. I thought, those poor older people…until I got to the words “65 and older.” Yikes. I’ve had more doctor visits in the last six weeks than in the last 12 years. But I resent being classified as elderly at age 66! Fortunately, my problems have been somewhat trivial in comparison to most health problems and surely will soon be over.
My biggest complaint now, shared for the shock and dismay of overseas readers with socialized medical care, is that despite paying quarterly for Medicare, and monthly for a supplemental plan, in an amount that would be a hardship to many people, I’ve already been charged $500 for doctor visits. I live in the wrong country where a person simply cannot afford to be sick. My dream that medicare would cover everything has been dashed. What a bitter disappointment.
But on to gardening, While I was at the clinic, Allan had weeded and deadheaded at the community building next door and photographed some tulips and heather.
He went home then to put the sides on the trailer and forgot to turn on his phone (or had it in the wrong pocket) and I had to walk ten blocks home from the clinic with no cane and no hat in 70 plus degrees glaring sun. I walk funny and wonder if people might think I had been drinking before noon.
The bad day started to get better at that point. After I had a bit of a sit down to recover, we embarked on a thrilling mission: picking up free mulch at Long Beach City Works.
It felt poignant to drive into the city works yard. How many, many times over the past quarter century have we driven down Sixth Street toward the big gate. We used to have our own key for dumping debris after hours. That made me feel special.
You can read the whole story of the biosolids program in this article winningly titled Toilets to Tomatoes. An excerpt:
“The city of Long Beach’s new biosolids treatment program is online and churning out homemade compost that could be coming soon to a garden near you.
“The rigorous, weeks-long process plays out at the city’s wastewater treatment plant, where sewage sludge is transformed into a high-quality product that can be used for a variety of residential, commercial and city uses. And this weekend, the city is hosting the first of two planned giveaways of the end-product to the public.”
Despite the title of the article and the rigorous testing and the handout given us at the gate about the exact composition of the mulch, I don’t think I would want to use it on veg or fruit. A web search, however, says that would be just fine to use biosolids in veg…..except that in 2013, they were not allowed in organic agriculture. If you want to, you can read a lot more about it in in one article after another. Other than apples and blueberries, my kitchen gardening is confined to fish totes and containers and the free mulch will go on my ornamental beds. A few herbs might be harvested from those beds…. But I figure I am old enough to not have to worry about long term results!
We used the same mulch on my front garden last autumn and on the Long Beach parks and planters, and it is a lovely product, light and yet moisture retentive and attractive on a garden bed.
I took my prescription as soon as we got home and within an hour, my ear felt remarkably better.
I was concerned about spreading the mulch on the garden because it felt so hot when we started to unload it. Allan put a food thermometer (well washed afterward) into the pile and it registered 126 degrees F! So we mostly offloaded it onto Alicia’s driveway. (Even though I knew she would say yes, I still texted her for permission.)
I did put a wheelbarrow load on one small section of the garden. It cooled down so fast when spread that I knew I’d been overly cautious. But by then, it was in a pile so I decided to let it rest overnight.
Allan set about repairing a slightly rickety rocking bench that we’d gotten from Susie of the Boreas Inn.
And he repaired an old shallow drawer that I want to use for sedums, and a disintegrating bee house that so far no bee has used.
We placed our new garden chaise longue out in the willow grove where I think I might be able to relax more than in the more cultivated garden, where I would always be seeing a weed to get up and pull. I tried it out. Skooter joined me and then spent the rest of the afternoon sleeping next to it.
I didn’t relax for long. When I looked around the grove a bit later, with the sun in my eyes, I realized I was being watched.
Friday night is Gardener’s World on BritBox, an excellent end to a day that got progressively better as it went along.
Glad your day got better as it went along. Free mulch would gladden the heart of most gardeners. I do have a question about the mulch. We get something similar from our transfer station, but everyone refers to it as compost, even the people at the transfer station. It is made from chopped branches, leaves, and other vegetable matter. Very dark and lovely. The town offers it free to gardeners who just want a bit for their own gardens. Anyway, your mulch looks very much like our compost, and I wonder if they are essentially the same. Or, are they different?
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Ours is made from the human sewage plant. Yours would be from yard debris. I hesitate with the yard debris mulch because I don’t know if it might have bindweed and horsetail in it depending on what they let people dump. They got some once at city of Long Beach that had bindweed in it that must have been twined in a hedge. I asked them to please not use it, but they put it under the street trees anyway and I was pulling bindweed for years!
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In the many years I’ve been getting compost from the transfer station, I have never had a problem with weeds of any kind. (Not even sure what bindweed is.) Now, let us hope that Murphy’s Law is otherwise occupied. Else wise, weeds will be running rampant through my gardens this year. 😉
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Yes, free mulch is always a God-send. I would use bio-solid materials on my ornamental plants but not on my veggies because I don’t trust the testing.–Not the testing for hazardous bacteria, but the testing for heavy metals and prescription drugs (people toss in their toilets).
As to your $500 bill, I empathize strongly. The reason I was angrily weeding and pruning the other day was due to a lab bill for $300. that I was NOT supposed to get. Insurance pays for my lab needs if they are processed by the lab they use. The local lab is a pick-up hub for MY lab, but despite the fact that I told 2 people my lab work had to be processed by MY lab, they processed it in-house resulting in a $300. bill. Spoke with the clinic manager, and she said she would check into it. Haven’t heard from her. It’s been a week.
Also, interestingly, in looking at the fine print of a new program offered by my health insurance to pre-assess costs for x-rays and imaging, there was a statement in their enrollment agreement that I would agree not to post anything on social media about anything related to this new program. I decided not to enroll. They can keep their new program.
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Wow re signing off on not posting anything on social media. And I hear you on being angry about medical bills. I am disgusted and am going to make a phone call about it when I feel calmer.
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PS I have the same concerns about metals and prescription drugs. They do have a detailed report in testing. I’ll post a photo of it when we get our next load on April 30th, or maybe even in tomorrow’s mulch related post if I remember.
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I am glad your ear is doing better. I have one ear/Eustachian tube that has been problematic since January, 2020 and have tried a variety of things. Some seem to help temporarily, but it always comes back. Keeping proper hydration levels does seem to help.
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Our Kathleen advises that a friend had permanent ear tubes installed that helped a lot. Not what I want …yet…but interesting.
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That is a good looking pile of mulch.
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Looking forward to getting more in ten days!
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You can never have too much.
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I’m happy to hear your ear got better! I think you deserved a bowl of ice cream after the walk home in the heat. Love the sword fern fronds unfurling.
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I might have had ice cream in my coffee that day for a special treat. 🙂
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